Dark Chao Adventures is an episodic script series I've been writing since I was ten. It started as a spur-of-the-moment thing, I made a thread on a forum called "Dark Chao Adventures" and the message was "All I can say is Episode 1: Chao In Space..." and people somehow replied with anticipation. So I decided then and there to write this thing.

ANYWAYEach season has eight episodes, most episodes have four or five chapters. The first three seasons had no overarching plots, though there was some level of consistency and canon to it. Starting with the third season finale, though, I began an arc I had initially planned on only lasting most of Season Four, and I pulled in villains I had introduced in an earlier episode (who themselves were references to beta episodes no one had even read). This wound up expanding into a plot that lasted all the way through Season Six, which was a season lasting ten episodes (bringing us all the way to Episode 50 which was a pretty lame episode). And yeah, that whole plot was basically "the chao have to beat those aforementioned beta villains," with Season Six having Shade (my favourite chao, a grey Dark chao who was for most of the series basically a self-insert) collect seven chaos drives to become a Dark/Swim chao so he could beat the bad guys and all that jazz.

By this point, my fandom and audience had kinda faded away because I mean even I was in 8th grade by this point, people eventually grow up and lose interest in chao. But I kept writing because here was a canon I could play with, here was a series I was comfortable writing with. It felt like more than fanfiction by that point. Plus DCA's how I wound up meeting Logic, Cadet, and Matsokune, so...

So I wrote more! I wrote Season Seven, which began with new villains who wanted to end DCA itself (the series has no fourth wall whatsoever), so a green chao I had always forgotten existed named Shadow had to step up to the plate as main protagonist, assisted by Shade and friends, to go on a very long arc to collect seven more chaos drives and become a Dark/Run chao so he can save the show. But the beta guys come back in and basically everything in the canon becomes relevant at some point during this adventure, and to top it all off I, the writer, am going through my abusive portion of my life and have to decide between writing for escapism and putting DCA aside-- and that conflict becomes a plot point too, no fourth wall and all that. Season Seven lasted twenty-nine episodes.

So then we come to Season Eight. By this point, a year had passed since I'd written any DCA. But I was in the Fear Mythos now, and I had gotten quite a bit of practice with writing. And by this point, Rapture was on a short break (this was just before the halfway point of Act III, as a matter of fact) so I needed to write something else to get some more perspective. I wound up writing the most eldritch of seasons, the most eldritch of finales, that I could ever think of, and arguably the most engaging and dramatic DCA had ever been. It wound up lasting.. six/nine episodes is the canonical length. But for the sake of convenience, let's say nine. I won't spoil all the details, but I will at least say a monster introduced in the Season Two finale wound up taking over the show, and over half the cast was killed off.

I thought the show was over. I had written the ending and everything. I didn't touch it for two years.